Kirill Marchenko contract extension highlights how Blue Jackets are heading into a new era

The RFA deal we were all anticipating is finally done. Of all of the restricted free agents the Columbus Blue Jackets had this summer, perhaps none were more important than Kirill Marchenko.

His deal was important for a couple of big reasons. First, he's a star caliber player whose best years still lay ahead. And second, he had arbitration rights - with an impending hearing that was scheduled for this Wednesday.

Instead, he and the club were able to come to terms on a 3-year, $11.55 million dollar contract. This gives the Blue Jackets a very palatable AAV of just $3.85 million dollars - not bad at all for a guy who is probably the third piece to their top line.

What this contract signals to me, however, is a philosophical change from the entire organization. That's not to say that it would not have been handled properly by the previous management regime. But, history will tell us that these negotiations weren't always easy under the last GM.

In fact, more often than not, RFA deals seemed to drag on through the entire summer - even when there wasn't other business that needed to be dealt with.

Jarmo Kekalainen was known as a heavy-handed manager. In fact, in his own words on the 32 Thoughts podcast (around the 28 minute mark), Jarmo talked about wielding the hammer in some negotiations and using leverage whenever necessary.

In the first two major contract extensions we've seen under Don Waddell, that doesn't seem like it's been the case. And in the end, both players came out of these negotiations with contracts that seem to be very team friendly.

Is it possible that Waddell's friendlier approach to negotiations, made the entire process easier from the offset?

What I mean here is, maybe the agents he was working with here weren't afraid to give up too much early on, because they knew they would have to concede more as time went on? They might have come straight forward with a more reasonable ask to begin with, which made the process quick and easy.

This would explain why we went from Kirill Marchenko publicly stating he hadn't received a reasonable offer, to signing a contract just days later.

It's not an unreasonable leap to make, and if true; we could be looking at a completely new era of CBJ hockey. This franchise has a history of either not developing players at all - or, worse, developing them, only to have them sprint away as soon as they are old enough to hit free agency. Or demanding a trade outright.

Yet here, in just his second month at the helm, Don Waddell just signed two of the most important young players in the organization to very manageable dollars and terms. And, better yet, he gets one more RFA contract negotiation with each of them, at the end of these contracts.

I could be entirely wrong and reading too much into this. But, these deals both came together really quickly once the team found its new head coach - and that definitely points to an easier process from the start. It's refreshing to see.